We examine the puzzling observation of newly emergent Chinese non-state-controlled enterprises (NSCEs) adapting the long-established practice from state-controlled organizations of inviting state officials for general non-technical and non-regulatory visits(领导视察) and then publicizing...

The finance literature offers two competing possibilities on how investors respond to the quality of public financial statements in their pricing decisions. They could collect either (a) more private information to benefit from lower information collection cost or (b) less private information...

Using an international sample of firms from 28 countries, we document that there exists a negative relationship between political connections and the informativeness of stock price, as measured by idiosyncratic volatility (IV). This finding is robust to alternative regression specifications,...

Using a sample of 22,442 firm-year observations for 3,721 U.S. listed firms, we show that family firms, on average, issue annual reports with higher readability than do nonfamily firms. Higher readability could occur due to lower obfuscation or less information conveyance. By controlling for...

Stock price crash risk could be lower in family firms because the controlling family investorshave a longer-term interest, hold greater decision rights and are better informed thaninvestors in diffusely owned firms (alignment effect). However, the agency costs betweenfamily and nonfamily...

This study finds that stronger market control (measured as fewer anti-takeover provisions) and more effective boards (measured as boards that are more independent and for which independent directors have more outside directorships) are both associated with higher R&D valuation. Furthermore,...

We show that firms that adopt poison pills exhibit higher asymmetry between reported earnings and stock returns after the adoption and a greater association between reported current earnings and lagged returns. Together, this demonstrates a decreased value-relevance of earnings after adoption....

Previous literature has provided mixed evidence of a premium in audit fee for industry-specialist auditors in US and other developed countries. In this cross-country study spanning twelve non-US countries, we provide evidence of such a premium in the international context, implying that...

We show that, for a firm facing a high marginal tax rate, the benefit of using debt relative to managerial ownership to control agency costs increases at a decreasing rate. Debt and managerial stock ownership represent alternative mechanisms for reducing agency costs of the relationship between...

Several comparative cost management studies in Japan and the U.S., have suggested the superiority of long term managerial contracts using future-oriented measurements in reducing costs and increasing value. In this paper, we show that the optimal length of the contract offered a manager is...